Swans star goes under the knife

Swans midfield star Luke Parker has undergone arthroscopic surgery on his troublesome PCL to assist in its recovery, which he injured against Geelong in the preliminary final. Tom Papley has also undergone surgery after being diagnosed with compartment syndrome.

While both players had been consulting specialists since the end of season, rest and recovery simply hasn’t been enough for either player, with Parkers injury regressing once he returned to training and Papley developing it as he ramped up off-season training. Both players are expected to resume pre-season training around February.

“It was decided a couple of days ago that an arthroscope is the best course of action and we fully expect Luke to recover well.”

Harley said Papley was also tracking well until he resumed training.

“Tom Papley developed Compartment syndrome when he started to ramp up his off-season program and he required surgery last week to release the pressure in the compartments in both legs,” Harley said.

“There’s some wound healing initially that he will need to recover from and he will be off legs for the best part of eight weeks.

“It’s disappointing but the success rate for this type of surgery is really high, so we’re looking forward to Tom recovering well and hitting the ground running come the new year.”

I can personally attest that both players are extremely painful and take a long time to recover from without surgery.